


Why, Jeeves

by drumbot_beta, machiavellijr



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse, WODEHOUSE P. G. - Works
Genre: Anachronistic, F/F, F/M, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Oxford, Political silliness, Pre-Slash, Screenplay/Script Format, Slightly AU - more lesbians?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 05:33:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 15,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2569973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drumbot_beta/pseuds/drumbot_beta, https://archiveofourown.org/users/machiavellijr/pseuds/machiavellijr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Bertie Wooster, things are going swimmingly in his life as a debonair man about town. But when a message appears bearing a summons from his beloved (yet rather fearsome) Aunt Dahlia, he’s off to Oxford with a sense of foreboding, even if he has got that jewel among valets, Jeeves, at his side. Will Jeeves be able to extricate him before he ends up in the Cherwell…. or worse, married?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written by myself and drumbot_beta for a student dramatic society. Any resemblance to any characters living, dead or currently studying Computer Science is wholly coincidental. We apologise to the shade of PG Wodehouse and wish to point out it is still better than Wedding Bells. All departures from canon are entirely intentional, except when they aren't. The date is approximately 1935.

_DRAMATIS PERSONAE_ (in approximate order of appearance):

BERTIE Wooster: Dashing young-gent-about-town. Not overly bright

Reginald JEEVES: His long-suffering valet. Overly bright.

A TELEGRAM BOY: Overly enthusiastic.

Dr Aunt DAHLIA Travers: Principal of Shrewsbury College and English Literature Fellow. Overly loud.

Dr Aunt AGATHA Wooster: Bursar of Shrewsbury College. Definitely not in a relationship with the Principal. Likes butterflies. Overly aggressive

Roderick SPODE: Leader of the British Union of ~~Florists~~ Fascists. Both loud and aggressive, but not very bright.

LENNY, RIFF and STALL: Members of the 88th Storm Brigade of the British Union of Fascists. Likewise not very bright.

EDWIN the Boy Scout: Full of good intentions, and we all know where those lead.

MADELEINE Bassett: Current fiancée of SPODE and former fiancée of GUSSIE Fink-Nottle. Very drippy.

Comrade ODIN, Comrade POLLY and Comrade HOLMES: Members of a Radical Students' Front.

GUSSIE Fink-Nottle: An amphibian-addled fathead with a bad habit of putting his thoughts down on paper.. Overly heartbroken.

AMARYLLIS Blackwood: An eccentric undergraduate of Shrewsbury. Overly impulsive.

CATSMEAT Potter-Pirbright, TUPPY Glossop and BINGO Little: BERTIE's friends from the Drones Club. Make BERTIE look very bright indeed.

Mr Pomfret the PROCTOR: Not a character from Happy Families, but a disciplinary official of Oxford University.


	2. Act One, Scene One: Bertie Wooster's Flat in Piccadilly

_BERTIE is in bed, the detritus of a good night with the Drones scattered around. Enter JEEVES with a teacup._

JEEVES: Are you awake, sir? Have the rosy fingers of d-, ah, two in the afternoon tickled you to full wakefulness?

BERTIE: ( _sleepily_ ) What is it? I'm suffering from a dashed awful headache. I'm – what's the word – c....

JEEVES: Crapulous, sir?

BERTIE: That's it. You always do know the right word, Jeeves. Now what is it? And is that one of your marvellous medicines?

JEEVES: Here you go, sir. There is a very insistent telegram boy outside.

BERTIE: Well? You aren't usually fazed by messenger boys. Take the message and bring me it in half an hour or so.

_Enter TELEGRAM BOY:_

TELEGRAM BOY: Telegram, Sir. For the recipient's ears only. Special instructions. Message begins: Bertie you louse. Have told the Post Office to make sure this gets to you in person. Stop. You can't get Jeeves to ignore it. Stop. Require your presence Shrewsbury College, Oxford. Stop. Urgent. Stop. Come non. Stop. Dahlia.

BERTIE: Louse? The nerve of her! My good and virtuous Aunt Dahlia calling me a louse. Take a reply. Begins. Am not louse. Stop. Detained in bed. Stop. Can send Gussie Fink-Nottle. Stop. Please. Stop. Insulting good name of Woosters. Stop. Bertie.

_Exit TELEGRAM BOY._

BERTIE: Jeeves, this stuff is revolting. ( _gulps_ ) But I do feel unaccountably recovered. ( _hands back mug_ )

JEEVES: ( _Sniffs mug_ ) Glad to hear it, sir. Apologies for the error, this was the dog's worming fluid. I'm very glad to hear it has curative powers for gentlemen as well. ( _Smirks at audience_ )

BERTIE: Very funny, Jeeves. Now, have you seen my new lime green bowler hat? It's quite the thing with the Drones.

JEEVES: I had observed the article in question, sir, and assumed it was in the nature of a novelty or practical joke. Surely you do not intend to wear it in public?

BERTIE: Absolutely I do. I have had my sartorial sensibilities ruled by you for too long, Jeeves, and the line must be drawn here. This far. No further. Now, Eggs and B. Good old Eggs and B.

JEEVES: Very good, Sir.

_Exit JEEVES._

BERTIE: Criticising my lime green bowler hat. The very nerve. The feudal spirit is not what it was.

_Enter TELEGRAM BOY._

TELEGRAM BOY: Reply, sir. Begins: Will have no substitute. Stop. Spink-Bottle dipsomaniac newt-fancier. Stop. Cover him in newt bait, chuck him in Serpentine, then get up here forthwith. Stop. Repeat come at once. Stop. Dahlia. Any reply, sir?

BERTIE: Too jolly right there's a reply. Dear Aunt you wound me. Stop. Expecting dinner from Anatole might cure my ailments. Stop. Is Shrewsbury College in Shrewsbury or Oxford, Query? Assume Jeeves' services required. Stop. Intolerable to spend so much time journeying about so people can consult my valet. Stop. He is not very good these days anyway. Has terrible taste in hats. Stop. Yr. Obdt. Nephew, Bertie.

_Exit TELEGRAM BOY, passing JEEVES on the way._

JEEVES: I beg to report, Sir, that the kitchens have run unaccountably short of bacon. Something about Meat-Free Mondays. I can only apologise profusely, sir.

BERTIE: And to think Dahlia requires your services, Jeeves. I am shocked and disappointed. The old feudal spirit which would have charged a French army armed only with a feather duster is sadly fallen away.

JEEVES: Assuming you mean the feudal retainer was armed with a feather duster, sir, and not the French Army, I would quite agree. However, the powers of a gentleman's gentleman are at naught next to the onrushing tide of environmentalism.

BERTIE: Not to worry, Jeeves. Perhaps sorting out my Aunt's troubles will perk you up. Aunt Dahlia requests and requires us in Shrewsbury College, Oxford. Or possibly Oxford College, Shrewsbury. I replied in the frostiest of manners, naturally, but I suppose we shall end up there regardless.

JEEVES: Doubtless the former, Sir. Shrewsbury is a recent foundation, a college for the education of young ladies in classical learning.

BERTIE: Oh yes, the Larvae Club used to raid their gym on Ascension Thursday. Don't ask me why. I could never quite remember after being radished the night before.

_Enter TELEGRAM BOY again, looking very tired_

TB: Reply, sir. Begins: Very well you extortionate louse. Stop. Dinner it is. Stop. Now let us. Stop. This ridiculous correspondence as we both know you will end up coming. Stop. Dahlia.

BERTIE: Well, that's that. Pack my things, Jeeves, we're going back to the jolly old dreaming spires.

_EXEUNT_


	3. Act One, Scene Two: Dahlia Travers' Office at Shrewsbury College, Oxford

_ENTER BERTIE, followed by JEEVES with the suitcases. There is a SONG with various characters coming in to sing a verse._

_**Bertie** _ _What ho to the dreaming spires  
_ _What ho to the spring  
_ _What ho to the beaming sun  
_ _That shines upon my skin  
_ _What ho to the cobblestones  
_ _What ho to the dons  
_ _What ho, good old Anatole_

 _**Jeeves (spoken)** _ _Very good sir, let’s move on…_

 _**Radicals** _ _What ho to the revolution  
_ _Make way for our righteous coup  
_ _We’ll strangle the oligarchy  
_ _And pass our finals too!_

 _**Chorus (everyone)** _ _What ho! What ho!_ _What ho to the jolly morning  
_ _First rate! Top hole!_ _We’re chipper and gay!_

 _**Aunts** _ _What ho to the lecture halls  
_ _Pipe smoke on the air  
_ _What ho to the leather sofas  
_ _Of our academic lair_

 _**Amaryllis** _ _What ho to the snails and spiders  
_ _Hawk moths on the wing  
_ _What ho to the crannies full  
_ _Of things that bite and sting_

 _**Blackshorts** _ _What ho to regimes and order  
_ _What ho to authority_

 _**Spode** _ _“Hail Spode!” they will cry in hordes  
_ _And all will bow to me!_

 _**Chorus (everyone)** _ _What ho! What ho!_ _What ho to the jolly morning!  
_ _First rate! Top hole!_ _We’re chipper and gay!  
_ _What ho! What ho!_ _What ho to the jolly morning  
_ _First rate! Top hole!_ _What ho to the day!  
_ _WHAT HO!!!!!!!!_

 

_EXEUNT OMNES except Bertie and Dahlia. We are now in AUNT DAHLIA'S office, Shrewsbury College._

BERTIE: Tally ho, aged relative!

DAHLIA: Ah, there you are, you young blot on Western civilization. Capital. And only slightly impeded by last night's orgy of drunkenness, I expect?

BERTIE: Aunt Dahlia, I resemble – that is to say, I resent! - that remark!

DAHLIA: I'm sure you do. Speaking of dipsomanaiacal fatheads, I suppose it's too much to hope for that you obeyed my instructions regarding that Spink-Bottle?

BERTIE: Fear not, Aunt Dahlia. Gussie has not accompanied me up to Oxford. He's been very wrapped up in his pursuit of the beautiful – and quite terrifyingly drippy – Madeleine Bassett. I mean really, what would you say to a girl who expressed curiosity as to whether the bally stars were God's daisy-chain?

DAHLIA: I would say nothing, except to tell my quarter-witted nephew to stop evading the question. As I recall, my actual instructions were for you to glue all of his newts together until they formed one giant newt, tie him to the said giant newt, weight them both down with concrete, and drop them in the Serpentine. But I suppose him not being here is a good enough substitute. Anyhow, enough of this Spink-Bottling. I have a job for you.

BERTIE: Forgive me for saying so, ancient r., but that sounds rather...ominous.

DAHLIA: Nothing of the sort, my dear boy! It will be neither onerous nor ominous, and you shall be richly rewarded.

BERTIE: Oh, ah? Is this one of those jobbies where the righteous shall claim their reward in heaven, but shall get the rough end of the Bosher Street magistrate here on earth?

DAHLIA: You're a regular heathen.

BERTIE: In point of fact, I did once win a prize for Scriptural Knowledge when I was at school.

DAHLIA: Why on earth is that relevant? Do stop blethering, and listen closely. You do want to assist your good and deserving aunt in her time of greatest need, don't you?

BERTIE: Nothing could give me greater pleasure.

DAHLIA: Good. The situation is as stands. Shrewsbury College is very nearly going to have a conference of contemporary lady writers during the Long Vac.

BERTIE: 'Very nearly'? Surely a conference isn't the sort of thing where you can let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I can', is it?

DAHLIA: Well, there's the devil. I'm sponsoring it under the auspices of the journal I edit, Milady's Review of Books. I'm currently angling to have one very particular novelist address the conference as our keynote speaker. She's all the rage in the more Bohemian circles at the moment. Florence Craye. I don't suppose you'll have heard of her.

BERTIE: Knew her?! Aunt Dahlia, I very nearly married her!

AUNT DAHLIA laughs in a manner reminiscent of a set of bagpipes being punched]

BERTIE: It wasn't funny! She tried to improve me! I'd rethink this whole rannygazoo if I were you, aged r. She'll try to improve you as well.

AUNT DAHLIA ( _crisply_ ): She'll have to reckon with Agatha if she does. In any case, my gay young tapeworm, I've no intention of you being here if and when she is, so don't worry about her. In fact, it's Agatha I'm rather more concerned about. You see, this Craye besom is asking rather a lot for her speaking fee, and it's Agatha who controls the finances. I've got to stick her for quite a fat cheque if we're to have La Craye opening the festivities.

BERTIE: I see. ( _he doesn't_ ) I'm afraid I'm still not sure what I'm doing here.

AUNT DAHLIA: You should be used to that by now. Now. Here's the thing. What I want you to do is very simple. You know, of course, about your Aunt Agatha's great passion in her field.

BERTIE: ...I do hope you're going to keep this clean, Aunt Dahlia.

AUNT DAHLIA: Her disciplinary passion. Her – oh, bother it, you fathead. You know she is a lepidopterist by specialisation. ( _long pause_ ) She collects butterflies.

BERTIE: A harmless devotion, if a little odd.

AUNT DAHLIA: Well, quite. And I happen to know that there's a perfect specimen in Oxford, the acquisition of which would open her heart to joy and her purse to my conference. There's only one small snag.

BERTIE: There always is.

AUNT DAHLIA: It belongs to one of the students. A mad creature by the name of Amaryllis Blackwood. She's a second-year biologist who cuts Chapel in favour of going on jaunts to lavender farms, and she says her greatest desire in life is to be humanity's ambassador to the snails.

BERTIE: She sounds like she's gone right through perfect pottiness and out into a universe of mild sanity.

AUNT DAHLIA: Indeed. Anyway, I need you to steal the butterfly from her.

BERTIE: What?!

AUNT DAHLIA: It's perfectly simple. You must enter her rooms, snatch the specimen, escape, and bring it back to me. Probably even you can manage it.

BERTIE: Aunt Dahlia, I can't go breaking into a woman's college digs! It's absolutely beyond the pale, even by the usual standard of your plans. I refuse.

AUNT DAHLIA: Oh, Bertie, what's become of the _preux chevalier_? What's become of the trusting boy I dandled on my knee?

BERTIE: Now see here -

AUNT DAHLIA: I am seeing, my dear boy. And what I see is a Bertram too stiff-necked to help out his dearest and most benevolent relative! On the other hand, I do commend your principles. It's not every man who would stand fast at the thought of losing not only his aunt's affection, but also an honorary PPE degree, a seat at the Encaenia, and Anatole's cooking...

BERTIE: I – _WHAT?!_

AUNT DAHLIA: Well, if you were to just be a good lad and go along the plan I have laid out for you like a little lamb, then I'm sure Shrewsbury could see its way to endowing you with an honorary degree. But, as you know, this college is a strict meritocracy! We are devoted to the pursuit of knowledge, whatever unusual avenues that pursuit may take, and I fear that anyone who proves too frivolous is unwelcome in these hallowed halls.

BERTIE: I -

AUNT DAHLIA: Particularly the hallowed dining hall.

BERTIE: That's -

AUNT DAHLIA: To cut a long story short, I'm afraid I really must ask you to steal this butterfly, or else Anatole's cooking will never pass your lips again, and I shall enforce a lifetime ban against you darkening the pleasant landscape of High Table.

BERTIE: Dash it, Aunt Dahlia, this is blackmail!

AUNT DAHLIA: Yes, isn't it rather? ( _reflectively_ ) You know, I do believe Anatole's cooking gets better around Trinity Term. Why, just last week, he served us -

BERTIE: You have made your point, O aunt of mine. It's true what the saying says. Aunts may be Fellows, but they certainly aren't gentlemen.

AUNT DAHLIA: That's the Wooster Spirit. Now, let us take a stroll around the cloisters, and I'll point out which windows correspond to this young Blackwood's chambers...

_EXEUNT_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What Ho to All This" lyrics by Jessica Law (of Jessica Law and the Outlaws, singers of 'polite murder ballads')


	4. Act One, Scene Three: Spode's Parade Ground

_Enter SPODE, followed by THREE FASCISTS (LENNY, RIFF and STALL) and EDWIN, trying and failing to do the goose-step._

SPODE: Halt! I call this parade of my 88th Iffley, Osney, Hinksey and Binsey-in-the-Swamp Storm Brigade to order! The British Union of Florists'-- (one of the FASCISTS coughs) er, of Fascists has its first triumph near at hand. We will overthrow the disgusting 'modern' perversions that infest Our Fair City, and cast down those unnatural women with their blue stockings and preposterous notions. We shall be the Saviours of Britain, and build a land where every true-born Englishman is free from wives correcting him, and has the right to enjoy the traditional Englishman's liberty to sound off on whatever subject he pleases without the slightest influence of reality. Hail Me!

FASCISTS: Hail Spode (EDWIN: Hail Me!).  _They do a very silly salute – something like a Full Rimmer._

SPODE: Now, my loyal minions. I have a cunning plan to crush the Judaeo-Bolshevik degenerate minions of international capitalism. Nothing stands in the way of our victory! Except defeat. We shall strike with a nationwide lightning campaign of concentrated –

LENNY: Er, no we won't. ( _SPODE glares_ ) I mean, no we can't... hail Spode?

SPODE: Explain.

LENNY: The trouble is, sir, we've got a bit of a problem. We've all failed our PPE Mods, and we need to do some work on the re-sits.

RIFF: It's all those women at Shrewsbury College. They all spend their time in the Bod...

STALL: Yeah, because they can't get a date

LENNY: Neither can we.

RIFF: Speak for yourself mate. And they make us look bad, because we're all busy being loyal Spods and so forth.

SPODE: We are not “Spods”! We are the British Union of Florists!

LENNY: Er, Fascists, Sir. Hail Spode.

SPODE: Fascists! And if you will please be quiet and listen to my glorious plan, you shall be enlightened. And your exams passed, and those strident Shrewsbury slatterns will be...

LENNY (increasingly leering): Stuffed, sir? Screwed? Shafted?

SPODE: Stopped. We will have none of that sort of thing, Lenny. We are supposed to be against licentious permissiveness. Law and order, that's the thing. Traditional gender roles in an Empire where the _Sun_ never sets. Where the _Mail_ must always get through. Where the _Telegraph Express_ es all that is right and proper in the world. Where the _Times_ are positively never changing.

RIFF: That's all good news, sir.

SPODE: Now, where was I? Oh yes, the plan. We shall demonstrate the degeneracy of those damnable damosels. For the first time, the Examiners for PPE have stooped to appoint a woman to their number. All the Mods resit papers are presently in the desk of the Principaless of Shrewsbury.

STALL: Brilliant, Sir. Hail Spode! We're going to replace them with questions that show how right and proper our views are! Ingenious!

SPODE: I was thinking more of stealing them and framing the staff of Shrewsbury. Obviously they

must be cheating anyway, how else could so many girls be getting Firsts?

EDWIN: We'd be doing a Good Deed! Sort of...

RIFF: Good deed? We're not the bloody Scouts, mate.

EDWIN: Yes we are! This is the 88th Iffley, Osney, Hinksey and Binsey-in-the-Swamp Scout Troop, isn't it?

SPODE: No you stupid little boy! This is the 88th Iffley, Osney, Hinksey and Binsey-in-the-Swamp Storm Brigade of the British Union of Florists!

LENNY: Fascists!

SPODE: Fascists! Now, are you a true-born British patriot willing to do your duty to God and to the King, or aren't you?

EDWIN: Well, if you put it like that... and it would be a good deed to expose a cheat, like you said... can I still be a Scout as well?

SPODE: When I organise the Spode Youth there will be no Scouts ( _EDWIN's face falls_ ) But until then, yes you can.

EDWIN: Hurrah! I know wood-craft too, so I can be really really sneaky.

SPODE: When our plan succeeds, Shrewsbury will be humiliated. They laughed at my beloved Madeleine, and my revenge shall be terrible indeed!

LENNY: Laughed at who, Sir?

SPODE: Madeleine Basset, the very flower of English womanhood. My beloved; the most perfect example of modest, retiring, virtuous, ladylike and above all quiet femininity. And that Principaless will regret ever calling her 'insipid' and 'wet'. With all her heart she, who has perverted the natural position of womanhood, will regret it, I say! Hail Me!

FASCISTS: Hail Spode (EDWIN: Hail Me!)

SPODE: Now, my unconventional conventionalists, you are to witness a new breakthrough in biochemical research! And Paradise is to be mine! No, hang on, that's not right. These shorts seem to be affecting my mind. I feel... released. Bad times de-ceased. My confidence has increased. Sorry, don't know what came over me there. Now it is time to be Frank. Edwin, you will be our man on the inside. Be at the French doors in the Principal's lodgings at eleven o'clock tonight.

EDWIN: But my bedtime's half past eight.

SPODE: Never mind. When the country is under Florist rule there will be no bedtimes.

EDWIN: Alright, then.

SPODE: The rest of you, meet me in half an hour at the King's Arms, and I will give you your orders.

_Exeunt FASCISTS, enter MADELEINE BASSETT dressed as a pre-Raphaelite Ophelia had someone fished her out of the lake just in time._

SPODE: Oh, Madeleine, my darling. I have a question to ask you. ( _pulls out a dog-eared piece of_ _paper from his sash_ ) Madeleine, you are a delightful blossom, an exquisite flower, a brave, delicate primrose struggling nobly against the rain. Sweet thing, will you marry me? No, don't answer! I can tell by your silence that you are overcome! I close my eyes (closes his eyes) and await your kiss...

Madeleine: Oh, Roderick! This is so sudden. Do you not think that the stirrings of romance are the arrows shot by cutesy-wutesey little baby Cupids?

Roderick: If you say so, my darling. Now, I've written the most splendid speech about Modesty and Womanhood. It will shake the very foundations of the country and hasten my inevitable rise to Dictatorship. Would you like to hear a bit? It'll be good preparation for when we're married and I assume my rightful place as ruler, with you by my side.

Madeleine: Oh, if you must, Roderick. Your speeches drop as the gentle rain from heaven to irrigate the fertile soil of people's silliness.

SPODE: Of course they do. I must give you the amusing part about the bicyclo-corporatist future of the Doolally...

_Exeunt with Spode wittering and Madeleine looking drippily long-suffering_


	5. Act One, Scene Four: The Banks of the Cherwell

_BERTIE and JEEVES off to stage left, by the banks of the Cherwell, looking with some suspicion/dismay at AMARYLLIS BLACKWOOD (stage right). She is botanising vaguely and cheerfully oblivious to their presence._

BERTIE: You're sure about this, Jeeves?

JEEVES: Indubitably, sir. From my enquiries in College, I am satisfied that my understanding of this particular young lady's psychology is sufficient for this plan to have some success.

BERTIE: So do I just...engage her in conversation?

JEEVES: Yes, sir. All of my informants concur that Miss Blackwood's character is of sufficient amiability that, once she has become aware of your existence, she is likely to regard you as – if not a bosom friend – then at least, not a threat.

BERTIE: Not a threat?

JEEVES: Unless you should so happen to impede her making the acquaintance of some gastropods.

BERTIE: I would never. Well, nothing for it, Jeeves, one must grasp the nettle and all that.

JEEVES: Indeed, sir. I have every faith in you.

_Exit JEEVES. BERTIE moves across the stage, nervously, and approaches AMARYLLIS. Unseen by either of them, EDWIN THE SCOUT has snuck up and busies himself with quietly destroying the local scenery in the background._

BERTIE: I say, what ho!

AMARYLLIS: Pardon?

BERTIE: I say...what ho? Lovely weather, isn't it?

AMARYLLIS: It's not! It's horrible!

BERTIE: ( _nonplussed_ ): I, er, I know sunshine is a rare bird of passage in these islands, but surely it's not horrible, is it?

AMARYLLIS: It's so nasty and parched-out and dry! All the slugs are in hiding, and the only things to be found round about are lambs and daffodils and ducklings.

BERTIE: Oh, ah?

AMARYLLIS: Yes. It's hideous. Speaking of unusual fauna, I don't believe I've seen you around here before.

BERTIE: Oh, well, I'm usually to be found up in the metrop., you know. Scratch Bertram Wooster and you find the heart of Piccadilly, I always say. Gilbert the filbert, the knut with a K...the pride of Piccadilly, the blasé roué, and all that. I'm just up in Oxford for a visit to my Aunt Dahlia – or Dr. Travers, I suppose you'd call her here.

AMARYLLIS: (vaguely disinterested). Oh. Would you like to see my amanita phalloides?

BERTIE: I beg your pardon?

AMARYLLIS: _Amanita phalloides_. The death's-cap mushroom. It's a type of poisonous fungus which causes anyone who eats it to die in hideous psychotropic agonies! :D I was lucky to find some, it's quite rare in this country. It's very pretty, would you like to see it?

BERTIE: I...certainly, why not -

_AMARYLLIS turns around to pick up the basket of poisonous mushrooms, only to find EDWIN dangling it precariously over the waters of the Cherwell._

AMARYLLIS: Here, you, what on earth are you doing?! Give me those mushrooms immediately!

EDWIN: Stand back, miss, these are poisonous! I've got to get rid of them before everyone at Shrewsbury dies in 'orrible agonies! ( _proudly_ ) It'll be my good deed for the day.

AMARYLLIS: I know they're poisonous, that's the whole point! Give them here, you horrible little polyp!

EDWIN: You might already be poisoned!

AMARYLLIS: I'm not.

EDWIN: I've done a First Aid course with the Scouts, you know. I could help if anyone was poisoned, and then that would count as a catch-up good deed from Friday...

AMARYLLIS: No-one has been or will be poisoned, except you if you keep this up!

EDWIN: ( _hopefully_ ) No sprained ankles? Burns? Dislocated nose? Really nasty broken arms where the bones are all sticking out and jagged and there's blood everywhere and zombie maggots and -

AMARYLLIS and BERTIE: ( _in unison_ ) NO!

EDWIN: Grownups aren't any fun at all.

_While gaping in horror at the patent insanity on display from all quarters, BERTIE has been sneaking up behind EDWIN. As he attempts to swipe the basket from behind, AMARYLLIS has the same idea from the other side, with the result that there is a DRAMATIC CHASE SCENE through the garden and the audience. Eventually, BERTIE manages to neatly trip EDWIN and grab the basket of poisonous mushrooms. He hands it to AMARYLLIS._

AMARYLLIS: Gosh, thank you! ( _absent-mindedly kicks EDWIN while he's down_ ). Frightfully decent of you, it would have been terrible if he'd dropped my mushrooms in the Cherwell. We would have been in the soup and no mistake.

BERTIE: Well, just as long as your poisonous mushrooms didn't end up in the soup with us, I'm always glad to lend a hand.

AMARYLLIS: Ha. Yes. Well, it was slightly less tedious to meet you than it is to meet most higher-order primates. More tedious than meeting snails, of course, but we all have our personal failings.

BERTIE: ( _unsure if he's been insulted_ ) I, er...thank you?

AMARYLLIS: I've got to dash, I'm afraid. I've an assignation at the Daubeney with some poisonous tree frogs and a hamper of strawberries from the ruined priory. Well...tinkerty-tonk, then.

BERTIE: ( _faintly_ ) Tinkerty-tonk.

_EXEUNT OMNES, AMARYLLIS humming to herself and BERTIE deeply, deeply confused._


	6. Act One, Scene Five: An anarchistic garret

_Enter THREE LEFT-WING STUDENTS._

ODIN: I hereby call this meeting of the Radical Students' Front for the Liberation of the Oppressed, Celtic Independence, Anti-War Activism and Cheaper Formal Hall Charges at Magdalen to order. Comrade Holmes, would you read the agenda, please?

HOLMES: The forms of bourgeois courtesy are symbolic of an outmoded deference, Comrade Odin. The agenda is as follows: Item the first, the dismal failure of our crew-date with OUCA. Item the second, the exact wording of our fraternal – sorry, comrade Polly, er, siblingal? counterblast to the dreadful article on Page 94 of yesterday's _Daily Mail_. Item the third. Overthrowing the capitalist state and replacing it with a Socialist utopia before leaving Oxford in four weeks' time. Item the fourth, debts arising from Comrade Odin's arrest for brawling at the aforesaid crew-date.

POLLY: Move to take the last item first as it is a money matter.

HOLMES: Seconded.

ODIN: But the bourgeois so-called running-dog “justice” system is fundamentally counterrevolutionary! We deny its jurisdiction entirely.

POLLY: I'm sure you do, but in the meantime you can be sent down for not paying up, so we'd better get cracking.

ODIN: Very well then. How does our Treasury stand?

POLLY: It more sort of falls down. It turns out that Marxist-Leninism is a very bad investment guide, particularly when one's investment vehicle is betting on Spain to win the World Cup. It is further evidence of the iniquity of a disciplinary and judicial system which relates the effective severity of punishment to the socio-economic circumstance of the accused and ensures the poorest suffer most from the entrenched oppression of the collegiate oligarchy.

ODIN: Comrades, in the name of revolutionary solidarity, I have a shameful admission to make.

HOLMES: Fire away, comrade.

ODIN: I can actually pay this out of my own resources. My father's an... investment banker. When I said he was in jail in America for trying to spread the revolution to Wall Street, he was more sort of in jail for spreading credit default swaps.

POLLY: Phew. Thank G- ah, I mean I almost wish I weren't a staunch atheist – thanking 'random eddies in the space-time continuum' doesn't really cut it. Class treachery is one thing, but having to leave Oxford...

HOLMES: Anyway, we don't have a dialectically-sound answer to who these Eddies actually are.

ODIN: ( _Striking a succession of dramatic intellectual poses)_  Never mind that. Item the first, then? The crew-date. You see, comrades, we have a clear issue here. Our fellow dedicated political strugglers are dedicated to the wrong politics. The only people who understand anything we say are diametrically opposed to everything we stand for, and are therefore clearly utterly dreadful excuses for human beings. This has historically left us with the simple expedient of hanging about at parties ostentatiously reading books by Saint-Simon, at which point young undergraduate girls will assume we are phenomenally deep and be willing to go to bed with us.

POLLY: Hear hear.

HOLMES: And what's wrong with that?

ODIN: Nothing, but the British Union of Florists and their lackeys have been campaigning to have Shrewsbury College shut down. Now if the largest women's college is closed down, I trust I need say no more about the future supply of young female undergraduates.

POLLY: Indeed not, Comrade. This is shocking! How dare those Neanderthal spods interfere with our Socialist sexual freedom? Without a sufficient level of basic education coincidentally equivalent to that of the averagely studious eighteen-year-old, how will anyone ever be impressed by our revolutionary dialectic and exciting opposition to their parents' dearest values?

HOLMES: They won't. Poor Comrade Odin will be doomed to die a virgin.

ODIN: Oi! Less of that.

HOLMES: Sorry. Regardless, it is our clear socialist duty to confound their politics and frustrate their knavish tricks. On thee our hopes we fix, Comrade Odin. No, hang on, that's the third verse of the national anthem.

POLLY: You do know that no actual monarchists know that.

HOLMES: Know thy enemy and know thyself and victory will always be yours.

ODIN: Is Sun Tzu acceptable revolutionary literature? He did support a rather nasty imperialist regime.

HOLMES: Yes, but he was an oppressed peasant so it's alright.

POLLY: We still need to work out how to save Shrewsbury.

ODIN: Perhaps - and I know this is radical but hear me out - a really impressive petition?

HOLMES: Nah, I doubt Spode can read.

POLLY: No, I've got it. A protest march. We'll picket the University offices.

ODIN: That's as nutty as a fruitcake. The University can't do anything about it.

POLLY: That's never stopped us picketing it before.

ODIN: True. It's worth a try I suppose.

HOLMES: And, in the meantime, I think we ought to be shadowing the Fascist leaders. Keep an eye on them. Stand ready to interpose ourselves between the violent thugs and their victims. Just temporarily – I understand Spode is only in town for a few days; without him the rest of them are no danger to anyone.

ODIN: Excellent! A bit of direct action. Really put the boot in. Just what we need to demonstrate our clear moral (and physical) superiority to any revolutionary backsliders.

HOLMES: Now, to the remaining items on our agenda. A really strong reply to this dreadful article in the _Mail_. “Hurrah for the Black Shorts”. Really. What an utterly fascistic thing for a national newspaper to say.

POLLY: I know! Anyone would think it was run by a bunch of aristocratic running dog imperialist capitalist bastards.

ODIN: Their influences have even spread to the sports pages! I know this looks like an article on the marvellous job referees do in the Football League, but we know what it really means, comrades. A coded dog-whistle message to disaffected elements in the army and police that the feudal backlash is at hand.

HOLMES: That's great stuff, Comrade! Write it up and we'll get it in the _Cherwell_ next Thursday. They're desperate for copy so near the end of term. Now, the last item. World revolution.

POLLY: I don't know why you're looking at me. You know I've got Finals coming up. I can't be expected to overthrow a worldwide system of oppression and get a 2:1. I have to have my priorities in order, after all – nobody wants to employ an unqualified disaster.

ODIN: True, and Finals papers are a great opportunity for the committed revolutionary to bore from within.

HOLMES: Well, they're certainly boring. Ha ha ha. And I've even got a revolutionary idea. You see, we talk a lot about having the wrong kind of government. That's obvious, but the deluded false consciousness of the electorate unaccountably doesn't vote for its true interests – that's us – so what we've really got is obvious. We're suffering from the wrong kind of people! If we simply dissolve the electorate (possibly in hydrochloric acid) and start again, we can build the Revolution as it's meant to be!

ODIN: No we can't. I do Chemistry and we'd never get permission to use that much acid. It's a class III controlled substance, you know.

HOLMES: In that case, move to adjourn Item 3 until next week?

POLLY: Just like last week, and the week before... seconded, I suppose. Anyone for a Pimms at the KA?

_Exeunt omnes_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Americans and persons unaccountably ignorant of Bertie's alma mater, this scene is one of the ones that probably made a lot more sense to the student audience:
> 
> OUCA is the Oxford University Conservative Association, which is very posh, very drunken and very right-wing. Oddly, David Cameron was not a member, but the Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, was.  
> A crew date is originally a rowing custom; members of one sports team or society go out with their opposite numbers (or a related society) of the opposite gender. Much curry and wine are had by all. The Labour/OUCA crew date is infamous for brawling, drunkenness and killing off political careers in their infancy.  
> The Cherwell is a student newspaper.  
> The Mail is an anti-student (and anti-Communist, anti-socialist, anti-progressive, anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner etc.) newspaper. "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" was how it greeted the formation of the British Union of Fascists, admittedly before anyone over here had really heard of Herr Hitler.  
> The KA is an upmarket pub where Bertie would quite possibly have had the odd pint of beer or six as a student.


	7. Act One, Scene Six: Miss Blackwood's Rooms at Shrewsbury

_BERTIE is pacing up and down, obviously anxious, about to burgle AMARYLLIS' room. JEEVES stands by to offer amoral support._

BERTIE: Are you absolutely certain that she's not in, Jeeves?

JEEVES: Indubitably, sir. The college scouts have proved most reliable in their information. I have it on the firmest authority that Miss Blackwood has settled for the evening in the college library, in order to write a stack of nuisance letters to the weather. She shall not return for some hours.

BERTIE: Well, I do hope so. Dash it all, Jeeves! Why does this always happen to me?! Why is every woman in my life so hell-bent on making me into Macavity the Mystery Cat?

_Pause. JEEVES looks at BERTIE as if the latter has completely lost it._

JEEVES: _Nolle prosequi_ , sir.

BERTIE: A cat-burglar, Jeeves! The Napoleon of Crime! It's a perfect mystery to me why the gentler sex seems so keen on having me pilfer everything that isn't nailed to something else. Cowcreamers, policemen's helmets, small brown leather-covered notebooks... ( _plaintively_ ) D'you suppose I'll ever be allowed – nay, encouraged – to go straight?

JEEVES: ( _under his breath_ ) I doubt it, Sir.

BERTIE: Eh?

JEEVES: Nothing, sir. Merely assent and encouragement.

BERTIE: That's the feudal spirit, Jeeves. Well, I suppose there's nothing for it but to stiffen the sinews and take this assignment on the chin. ( _despondently_ ) Who was that fellow who was beefing about feet of clay and being kissed by Quatermass?

JEEVES: I believe you are referring to the final lines of Mr. Oscar Wilde's 'Ballad of Reading Gaol', Sir – 'He does not pray with lips of clay for his agony to pass, nor feels upon his shuddering cheek the kiss of Caiaphas.'

BERTIE: Yes! And it's the same with me. Although why one should think of kissing at a time like this is beyond me. Well, anyway, Jeeves, I think you'd best be off. I'll just nip in, pinch the flutterbye, and be out again neat as you like. I'll see you in about an hour, at most, in my rooms. Do have the old corpse-reviver to hand, would you?

JEEVES: I shall have the decanter ready, sir. Good luck.

_JEEVES oils out. BERTIE gathers his courage and slips into AMARYLLIS' room. He begins the search, pausing only to make horrified faces at a tank of GIANT AFRICAN LAND SNAILS. Eventually, he lights upon the prize butterfly._

BERTIE: Aha!

 _He very nearly drops it, however, when he hears noises from the corridor. Someone else is attempting to enter the room. In alarm, BERTIE hides in a wardrobe, still clutching the prize butterfly. Enter SPODE, LENNY, RIFF, and STALL. They proceed to ransack the place._  

SPODE: _(Bellowing)_ Quiet! Efficiency must be our byword. Now, the obvious place for that blasted harridan to have hidden the Mods resit papers would be her desk, although who knows how a woman's mind works. Who's brought the lockpicks?

LENNY: Edwin did, Your Spodeliness.

SPODE: Well? Where is he?

RIFF: ...We must have lost him, sir. Probably ran off home to his mum before we even got to Shewsbury.

STALL: ( _sneers_ ) I told you he wasn't made of proper Fascist stuff.

_LENNY, RIFF, and STALL indulge in vaguely Fascist bickering for a bit while SPODE moves to the desk. He tries the drawer, and finds it unlocked. He leafs through some of the papers._

SPODE: But this...this is nonsense!

RIFF: Well, it was written by a female, sir.

SPODE: Even taking that into account, it's just...knitting patterns for sea creatures! Nonsense letters about folk music! Some frankly obscene and vulgar observations on the mating habits of the banana slug, which I sincerely hope is not, itself, a euphemism! And...an entire ledger of receipts for gentlemen's three-piece suits?

LENNY: Clearly the work of a disturbed and unnatural mind.

STALL: The bloody cheek of the faculty, insisting that we re-sit our Mods, when the mind behind them has obviously gone floating off down the Cherwell years ago!

SPODE: Quiet! The examination papers don't seem to be here. We shall have to search the rest of her room. However... ( _he taps the ledger with his finger_ ) This has given us an unexpected advantage, my loyal fashionistas!

RIFF: (cough) Fascists, sir.

SPODE: Fascists, then. Two immediate possibilities present themselves. The first is so obvious as to be laughable – namely, that the Principaless of Shewsbury is an invert and a Uranian. One of those horridly masculine women who rejects the natural grace and beauty of feminine ladyhood, in favour of cutting off her hair and rouging her knees and aggressively indulging her oral fixation through the smoking of cigars and pipes.

_There is a pause while the ASSEMBLED FASCISTS try to imagine the Principaless with rouged knees._

LENNY: That's...kind of hot, mein Spoderer.

SPODE: It's not, it's perfectly degenerate. Anyway! The second, and more pressing issue, is the sheer expenditure she's dishing out for this modish extravagance. Look at all this money! Enough to outfit an entire harem of nubile Sapphic transvestites! There's no other explanation for it: she must be appropriating College funds to keep her acolytes in fashionable pinstriped suitings! With this document, we shall blow this nest of crossdressing corruption wide open, and expose the scandalous mismanagement of funds and morals rotting at the heart of Shewsbury so-called 'College'.

LENNY: Uh, sir, are you sure we're in the right room?

SPODE: Of course, you dolt! ...Why do you ask? RIFF: Well, there seems to be a lack of anything...Principal-ish in here. Also, I'm not sure the Principaless wears these sorts of cami-knickers...

_He moves to hold the articles of clothing up to the light, but as he does so, he catches sight of the GIANT AFRICAN LAND SNAILS and lets out a piercing scream. The OTHER FASCISTS join in. Enter the RADICAL STUDENTS! They are brandishing rolled-up copies of the Socialist Worker, and are led by EDWIN._

EDWIN: ( _proudly_ ) Here they are!

ODIN: At last, you despicable fascists, we've caught you bang to rights! Not content to trample our civil liberties by the rule of law, you have the complete lack of scruples required to break, take, and grab anything you want!

HOLMES: ( _primly_ ) So we see the hypocrisy and greed which underlies the oppressive systems of capitalism. ( _less primly_ ) Now stand still while we whack the snot out of you.

LENNY: Damn it! I thought we'd managed to get you Lenin-loving losers off our trail at the Turf Tavern!

POLLY: Nothing in the world can put off a Communist! Anyway, your travel-sized totalitarian told us where you were.

EDWIN: ( _proudly_ ) A Scout never lies!

SPODE: For the last time, you're not a – never mind! What are you even doing here?

ODIN: I think the more pertinent question is: why are you here? In a female student's bedroom? In the evening hours?!

SPODE: It's – what?! Isn't this the office of the Principaless of Shewsbury?

HOLMES: Nope. That's the floor below. This room belongs to Comrade Blackwood. She's an alright sort. I'm sure she'd be ideologically sound if she knew what an ideology was. If the task of spearheading the Revolution didn't demand absolute devotion and celibacy -

POLLY: - You'd ask her if she was interested in seizing your means of production. We know. What we still don't know is why the fash are in her room. ( _glowers menacingly at the nearest Black Short_.)

ODIN: Salacious and perverted reasons, no doubt, born of the decadence in which late-stage capitalism is rotting.

POLLY: Yeah, but salacious and perverted in the wrong way. As opposed to our salacious perversion.

HOLMES: Quite. I move that, since their presence here can only be born of bad faith, we smash the fash into a quivery pseudo-authoritarian jelly!

ODIN and POLLY: Motion carried!

_There is a RAP BATTLE between the FASCISTS and RADICAL STUDENTS_

SPODE: Now listen, you blithering Bolshevik fool,  
Let Spode and the Black Shorts take you back to school.  
We alone can keep Britain alive-  
Or would you rather I served you up a bunch of fives?

ODIN: You’re driveling utter bilge, you realiae,  
You right wing apes deserve to be despised,  
We’re Marxo-Lenin-Trotskyites, under hammer and sickle  
Come one step closer and you’ll be in a pickle.

SPODE: Your economic nonsense is sheer poppycock,  
Back down or I’ll knock off your Eastern Bloc  
I do declare you’ve got my dander up  
And if you don’t desist, there will be fisticuffs

ODIN: You quasi-feudal counter-revolutionary bore  
If you rile me further you’ll be feeling sore  
Have you ever even read the Communist Manifesto?  
I think you’ll find it says that we’re the best _-oh!_ ( _the oh! is because SPODE has just punched him in the nose)_

_The RADICAL STUDENTS start enthusiastically whacking the BLACK SHORTS and SPODE with rolled-up newspapers. BERTIE, still clutching the prize butterfly, attempts to sneak out in the chaos, only to run into AMARYLLIS, who chooses this awkward moment to enter her rooms. She is completely unperturbed by finding her rooms hosting an impromptu Fight Club._

BERTIE: Oh God – I mean – oh good! What ho, Amaryllis!

AMARYLLIS: Hullo. Goodness, all this seems very exciting. Is it the League of Shadows dance training night again?

HOLMES: We were just -

BERTIE: I can explain -

AMARYLLIS: ( _cheerily_ ) Oh, don't bother. I never object to a party and a jolly old singalong. Shall I get my mandolele out? I'd offer you all Ovaltine but I'm using it to culture some slime molds.

SPODE: This isn't a party, you stupid girl!

BERTIE: These fascist chappies were trying to steal your prized butterfly! ( _he brandishes it_ ) That's why I've, er, got it. To keep it safe. Ye-es.

HOLMES: And I heard them insulting your snails. In fact ( _he shoves a kettle into LENNY's hand, taking him by surprise_ ), they were planning to pour boiling water into your vivarium and eat your snails with a light bearnaise sauce! Look, one of them's still got the kettle in his filthy fascist hands!

 _AMARYLLIS comprehensively loses her rag, seizes a copy of the_ Socialist Worker _from POLLY, and starts belabouring the BLACK SHORTS with it._

AMARYLLIS: You blackguards! Brutes! Toad-sniffing lickspittles! Cold-hearted murderers!

_Enter AUNT AGATHA bellowing._

AGATHA: What in God's name is going on here?

BERTIE: Aunt Agatha!

AGATHA: Bertie?!

AMARYLLIS: Dr. Wooster!

HOLMES: Amaryllis -

AGATHA: Enough of this thusness. Can someone kindly explain exactly what kind of sordid imbroglio is taking place here?

_There is silence from all concerned, except AMARYLLIS, who is humming and patting the SNAILS._

AGATHA: Very well. If no-one is particularly inclined to explain themselves to me, perhaps you'll be more willing to unburden yourself to the College disciplinary panel. All of you. Now get out and stop stomping on the peace of this academic haven with your clodhopping boots. Shoo.

_Exeunt the RADICAL STUDENTS, the BLACK SHORTS, EDWIN and SPODE. BERTIE and AMARYLLIS remain onstage whilst AGATHA fumes and fusses over the general mess (and eavesdrops blatantly). BERTIE attempts to scoot away, still clutching the butterfly._

BERTIE: I'll just be – ah – I'll be away, then!

AMARYLLIS: It was awfully sporting of you to defend my butterfly like that, old bean. Very chivalrous indeed. I'd almost like to give you some sort of small gift. Hmm, what would be suitable...

BERTIE: Oh no, that really won't be necessary.

AMARYLLIS: Got it! ( _she skips up to BERTIE and takes the butterfly from him_ ). In recognition of your bravery in guarding my butterfly, I shall entrust to you the protection of everything I have!

BERTIE: Beg pardon?

AMARYLLIS: Bertram Wooster, I will be your wife! ( _She kisses him on the cheek_ )

AMARYLLIS: Well, that's the future sorted. I expect we'll be very happy so long as you're alright with having tadpoles instead of children. I must ask you to buzz off now, though, it's been a frightfully long day. I'm off to see if the kitchen has any Ovaltine without slime mold in it. 'Night!

BERTIE: ( _faintly_ ) Goodnight. _Exit AMARYLLIS_

AGATHA: Ahem. Bertie, you blithering horse's posterior, what do you think you're playing at? You may have saved the day in an act of unprecedented gallantry, but your attentions are liable to totally derange my most promising biologist. You had best take the greatest of care, young man.

_Exit AGATHA. BERTIE stands centre stage, a horrified rictus frozen on his face._

 

**END OF ACT 1**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will now be a short interval. To replicate the original student garden play experience, go and stand in the cold for a bit sipping gin and tonic or Pimm's.
> 
> The Gentlemen's Rap Battle was written by Jessica Law (mostly).


	8. Act Two, Scene One: The Banks of the Cherwell

_CHARLES RYDER and SEBASTIAN FLYTE, accompanied by ALOYSIUS, wander onstage. They wander about being aesthetic and tragically beautiful, then realise that they've found themselves in the wrong play, since this one is evidently 'pullulating with women', and they should head off at once out of danger. Exit CHARLES and SEBASTIAN. JEEVES and BERTIE are arriving by punt as the scene opens properly. BERTIE is reclining barefoot in the punt with assorted picnic paraphernalia/empty champagne bottle/books etc. JEEVES punting, dressed (as ever) in full three-piece suit and bowler hat._

BERTIE: I mean to say, Jeeves, this is really beyond the pale!

JEEVES: Assuredly most disturbing, sir.

BERTIE: I mean to say!

JEEVES: Quite. If you would care to disembark, sir, I shall moor the punt, and we may find ourselves on a firmer footing. _Solvitur ambulando_ , as the Roman was given to remark.

_BERTIE and JEEVES bestir themselves to dry land._

BERTIE: Do tie the punt up securely, Jeeves. With all the madcap shenanigans assaulting us from every corner. I shouldn't be surprised if some pirates made off with it.

JEEVES: I should not be concerned, sir. There are no pirates in Oxford.

_JEEVES moors the punt._

BERTIE: Of all the possible people in the world to whom the blasted barnacle could have attached herself, why did she choose me?

JEEVES: It does seem somewhat implausible, sir.

BERTIE: Why not Gussie Fink-Nottle? I see it now, Jeeves; I see it all. I should have disobeyed Aunt Dahlia's orders and brought Gussie up to Oxford with me. I've finally found the one female specimen more keen to install a vivarium than a nursery, and the perfect blockhead's nowhere to be seen! He'd snap her up in an instant, were he but here. I mean honestly, Jeeves, have you ever seen two amphibian-addled fatheads more suited for each other? They even look alike.

JEEVES: It is difficult to imagine a more amiably complimentary coupling, sir. 'One face, one voice, one habit, but two persons' – as the Bard would have it.

BERTIE: Well quite. Your pal Bard does come out with just the right adage for the occasion, Jeeves. But in any case, complaining isn't going to get us out of this pretty imbroglio. What we need is a plan. ( _hopefully_ ) I don't suppose you've had the opportunity to formulate one as we meandered up the Isis?

JEEVES: I fear not, sir. BERTIE: Really? Not even through the proximity of all those fish?

_Pause. JEEVES is obviously struggling to follow BERTIE's train of thought, even more so than usual._

JEEVES: I fear I do not entirely follow, sir.

BERTIE: Well, I know at least part of your phenomenal brainpower comes from the consumption of fish – I suppose I was wondering if _ingestion_ was strictly required, or if mere proximity would be enough – given a sufficient quantity and concentration of fish, anyway.

JEEVES: ...No, sir.

BERTIE: I suppose not. It was a long shot, and anyway, a close personal affinity with fish is rather more Gussie's department. Do you have a notepad handy, Jeeves, or can we rely on your marvellous memory?

JEEVES: I am adequately equipped for the task, sir.

BERTIE: Righto. There are multiple threats advancing on all fronts towards the hapless personage of one Bertram Wooster, and if we are to have a single hope of escaping the current rannygazoo unscathed, we must unpick them. Item the first: Aunt Dahlia and her seemingly unquenchable desire to turn me to a life of crime.

JEEVES: I believe the popular wisdom shared by both judge and jury alike is that a life of respectability is highly preferable to one of habitual criminality, sir. That is to say - if I may venture a suggestion at so early a junction - I submit that the easiest course of action is to leave Miss Blackwood's rare butterfly quite unmolested.

BERTIE: Instead of stealing it, I should...not steal it?

JEEVES: Precisely, sir.

BERTIE: ( _with a resigned headshake_ ) That won't do, I'm afraid. Aunt Dahlia's made it very clear that if the desired butterfly fails to materialise, I'm barred forever from the High Table of Shrewsbury and the divine fire of its cook. Item the second: how on earth do I get out of marrying this Blackwood beasel? Item the third, for that matter: should I be at all concerned about all this Fascist foolery and Socialist shenaniganery?

JEEVES: We may dispense with political concerns, sir. The Red Menace in this country may more accurately be described as 'the Red Nuisance', or perhaps the 'Red Gentle Annoyance.' Similarly for the Union of Fascists. The less said about their sartorial...misapprehensions, the better. ( _closes eyes, shudders as if in actual physical pain_ )

BERTIE: Righto.

JEEVES: As to the question of your impending nuptials, sir...it grieves me both personally and professionally to make such a confession, but I have yet to hit upon a solution.

BERTIE: ( _false bravado_ ) Well...we've still got some time! Don't worry, Jeeves. A couple of the Drones are braving the arduous trek up from the metrop. to throw me a stag party tomorrow night. With any luck, she'll accidentally fall in love with one of them instead and the whole business will sort itself out.

JEEVES: We can but hope, sir.

BERTIE: I'd feel sorry for whichever poor sap was eventually slated to oil up the aisle with her, of course, but in a sort of 'there but for the grace of God' way.

JEEVES: Indeed, sir.

BERTIE: Who knows, Jeeves – maybe this time I'll even be able to get myself out of the soup, without you having to give the young master a hand!

JEEVES: ( _frozen smile_ ) That would certainly be a phenomenon, sir.

BERTIE: We must grasp the nettle, as it were. Face the future with the equanimity of a French aristocrat in his tumbrel. Take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune upon the chin.

_Little pause._

BERTIE: Jeeves?

JEEVES: Yes, sir?

BERTIE: We're utterly buggered, aren't we?

JEEVES: Mmmmm. ( _nods_ )

_They sigh, heavily. EXEUNT_


	9. Act Two, Scene Two: The Banks of the Cherwell

_BERTIE is sitting on a bench, alone. Enter the DRONES, raucously. Throughout this scene, any Drones not otherwise occupied are throwing bits of paper or bread around_

BERTIE: Hello, chaps! Good Lord, it's Tuppy! And Bingo! And Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright! I'm as surprised as a fox being chased by a bunny rabbit. What brings you all to this blasted heath?

TUPPY: It's hardly a blasted heath, Bertie, it's the banks of the Cherwell. And you know why we're bally well here. You invited us, old crumpet. For a stag party, you know?

CATSMEAT: Yes, I suppose there have been a lot of exciting hijinks (well, you didn't say exciting but we read between the jolly old lines, you know) for you to end up engaged to some bluestocking girl who knows about snails and things.

BERTIE: Correct me if I'm wrong, old bean, but didn't I say you should all come up tomorrow? I'm supposed to be a witness at some sort of trial jobbie this afternoon.

BINGO: Oh never mind about that. I'm sure they'll manage without you. Congratulations, old boy! Is she very pretty?

CATSMEAT: Is she very rich?

TUPPY: Does she keep snails in the bedroom?

BERTIE: Dash it all, how should I know? I've only met her twice.

BINGO: Fast work, old sport. Love at first whatsit, I suppose?

BERTIE: Well, sort of. I don't know how it happened, really. One minute I was burgling her butterfly -

TUPPY: Oh, my! Steady on, Bertie!

BERTIE: Not like that, you rotter! Anyway, the next minute, total chaos, and somehow after that she was plighting her eternal troth, whatever that actually is. Dashed confusing.

CATSMEAT: Well, old beansprout, never let it be said that the Drones Club were backward in going outward. We've come to shove you off into the uncharted waters of matrimony, dropping the pilot of sobriety at the lighthouse of drunken tomfoolery and coshing the navigator of good sense over the head with an empty gin bottle along the way.

BERTIE: What are you babbling on about, Catsmeat?

BINGO: He means we've come to throw you a stag party, Bertie. You know, girls, whisky, dinner, whisky, hijinks, whisky – a proper debauch before the pitter-patter of tiny Woosters heaves into view.

TUPPY: Can a noise heave into view? Into hearing, isn't it?

BINGO: Well, yes, but that sounds silly.

BERTIE: Now hold up, chaps. There's many a slip twixt the cup and the wedding-vows, you know.

CATS: Alright then, we're here because we're tired of London ( _BERTIE looks shocked_ ) and this is as good an excuse for a party as any. Now, Tuppy's seeing to the food, and I'm in charge of the drink, which leaves Bingo for the entertainment.

BINGO: Oh yes, the entertainment. Now have we got a treat for you there, Bertie. The one-woman magical show of Augusta Fitz-Newton, no less. She gives speeches, dances, does magic tricks, a humorous bit with a trained newt, that sort of thing.

CATSMEAT: Really? A trained newt?!? Wow!

BINGO: Really. I do think you're jolly lucky, Bertie. Most chaps only get whisky and some awful burlesque show or something. We've got you whisky, dinner AND a girl who's a real magician. With a newt.

BERTIE: I don't know about you but I'm starting to smell a rat so large you'd think its mother had had relations with a rhinoceros.

TUPPY: Speaking of bad smells, where's old Gussie got to? I know he's in town anyway, he really ought to have the decency to put in an appearance.

CATSMEAT: Oh never fear, Tuppy. He'll be along. Probably got distracted by an interesting species of newt. Anyone for a drink? ( _He produces a hipflask_ ) Whisky? ( _another hipflask_ ) Cognac? ( _and another_ ) Raspberry Cosmopolitan? ( _he keeps this up for as long as his pockets will hold have hipflasks, then drops them all_ )

BERTIE: How about a Pimm's to start us off?

CATSMEAT: Oh. Sorry, Bertie. Dashed bad form, I know, but there isn't any. The town's supply has been drunk dry. Something about amateur theatricals.

_ENTER GUSSIE dressed as Sybil Trelawney, only more so, worse, and carrying a large stuffed newt._

GUSSIE (for it is he), SINGS:

Ladies and gents at the front of the tent, you will note there's a newt up my sleeve  
My wizardry bold can end what doubts you hold, I will make the worst cynic believe!  
From amphibians grand to this toad in my hand, I'm a miracle from head to toe  
With a prestidigitational, slimy and sensational, newt-filled magical show!  
Yes my simply unforgettable, not at all regrettable, newt-filled magical show!

GUSSIE ( _In a deeply stage-frit, gloomy fashion_ ): Hello boys and – boys.

DRONES: Hullo! ( _Confused 'who the heck are you' noises_ )

GUSSIE: I am the great Augusta Fink– er, Fitz-Newton, mistress of the arcane. Do you want to see a magic trick? Where you see this coin (h _e flourishes a coin_ ), I will transform it - into TWO coins! ( _the other coin falls out of his sleeve as he sweeps his arm back dramatically_ )

BINGO: Jolly good try, old sport. You'll get it next time. Give us the bit with the newt!

GUSSIE ( _more brightly_ ): Aren't they just fascinating creatures?

BERTIE: Alright, why is Gussie Fink-Nottle dressed up as Gypsy Rose Lee? I'd know that expression of fish-eyed panic anywhere. Is this someone's idea of a joke?

CATSMEAT: Don't be silly, Bertie, she's the entertainment. Augusta Fitz-Newton, you know. Not old Gussie. He's a chap, for starters.

GUSSIE: ( _removes wig_ ) No, you've caught me, Bertie. This was only my second engagement ( _Bertie winces_ ) as Augusta – I was terrible, wasn't I?

TUPPY: Yes, I'm afraid so.

BERTIE: Not terrible, Gussie. Still need a bit of practice, what what? Just like when I played a third of Ophelia at school, remember?

BINGO: We've been trying to forget.

GUSSIE: ( _crumples_ ) My heart is broken, Bertie. How can I concentrate on magic tricks when my beloved Madeleine is in the clutches of that rotter Spode?

BERTIE: We'll work something out, old chap. I tell you what, go and talk to Jeeves back at the College. He's thoroughly stumped by this whole burglary business right now – something easy like star- crossed lovers might kick that planet-sized brain of his into action.

GUSSIE: Oh, thanks awfully, Bertie. And congratulations.

_Exit GUSSIE._

CATSMEAT: Right. Now old newt-features has gone, let's all have a drink (distributes hipflasks). Bottoms up! ( _BINGO crouches down with his arse in the air_ ) Not like that!

_Too late. BERTIE leap-frogs over him, flask in hand. General horse-play ensues._

TUPPY: Tally ho, chaps! Last one back with a Proctor's trousers is a rotten egg!

_EXEUNT riotously_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song "One Man Magical Show" is by Julia Ecklar, lovingly ripped off by MachiavelliJr. It may be found at http://grooveshark.com/#!/search/song?q=Julia+Ecklar+One+Man+Magical+Show


	10. Act Two, Scene Three: A Different Bank of the Cherwell

_GUSSIE FINK-NOTTLE is standing alone, centre stage, moodily pulling the petals off a flower._

GUSSIE: ( _monologuing_ ) She loves me...she loves me not...she loves me...she loves my newts...she loves newts not...she loves me...she loves a Neanderthal in footer bags...

_Enter JEEVES, carrying a tray with decanter._

JEEVES: Good afternoon, sir!

GUSSIE: ( _darkly_ ) If you say so, Jeeves.

JEEVES: Is something amiss, sir?

GUSSIE: Amiss?! Jeeves, my heart is irreparably broken! My life has no meaning! I am living in an eternally suspended state of angst and misery, not dissimilar to the week between one Finals paper and the next – except there is no revision which could come out with a first-class result. Not for my lonely soul, anyway.

JEEVES: I am terribly sorry to hear you say so, sir. With the most delicate restraint, may I venture to enquire as to the cause and nature of your desolation?

GUSSIE: Madeleine, oh Madeleine! If I could be an expert in only one arcane and madnessinducing field of study, it would be her. And yet it cannot be. She loves another. That brute Spode has stolen her away into his animalistic clutches.

JEEVES: My deepest condolences, sir.

GUSSIE: ( _moodily_ ) Have you even seen Spode, Jeeves? I've heard of people being political animals, but he's more like a political red-kneed tarantula. He looks like somebody dressed up the Piltdown Man in a loud suit and took him on tour as a sideshow novelty. He reminds me of that Lovecraft fellow's description of the 'Innsmouth Look.'

JEEVES: Strong sentiments indeed, sir.

GUSSIE: My hatred of him is matched only by my adoration of the blessed Madeleine; the delicate silken lily crushed beneath his macerating paw.

JEEVES: Difficult though it may be, sir, my advice would be to put your love for her in some safe place, deep within the heart, and resign yourself to its impossibility. In the words of the poet Housman, sir: 'He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? - he would not stay for me to stand and gaze; I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder, and went with half my life about my ways.'

GUSSIE: Yes. I suppose there's some sense in what you say, Jeeves. Loathe though I am to leave my flower in such adversity – and things can't get much more adverse than being married to Spode. D'you know, I happened to see him eating an ice-cream on the Cornmarket the other day, after bellowing out one of his hateful diatribes? The way he eats ice-cream reminds me of a tapir with a head-cold. All that snuffling. ( _distasteful shudder_ )

JEEVES: You seem unusually articulate in your critiques of his habit and person, sir. Are these all extempore?

GUSSIE: Oh no, Jeeves, rather not. I've been observing him for a while now. You can hardly walk from Catte Street to St. Giles without tripping over the goose-stepping goobers. No, I've been writing down my choicest observations in this little notebook here.

_He extracts a small notebook from his jacket and brandishes it triumphantly._

GUSSIE: It helps ease the sting a bit, you know.

JEEVES: ( _trying desperately to keep himself composed in the face of Gussie's idiocy_ ) I am glad to hear it, sir. May I, however, proffer a suggestion? The rhetoric of the British Union of Fascists tends towards the violent and profane. Although they have not yet stooped to the level of actual assault against any persons, there are rumours that it may come to this.

GUSSIE: The rotters!

JEEVES: Indeed, sir. More to the point: the person upon whom violence may, in that unhappy circumstance, be visited, would be...well, anyone who happens to be found with a notebook full of personal criticisms of their Dear Leader. In a word, sir: you.

GUSSIE: Oh. I shouldn't like that.

JEEVES: Therefore, sir, I propose that you entrust the notebook to me for safekeeping. You may be assured of my discretion and reliability in this matter; the code of members of the Junior Ganymede Club is a sacred one.

GUSSIE: Right-ho.

_He gives the notebook to JEEVES._

JEEVES: It seems to me, sir, that at this trying time, what you are most in need of is a friend. A boon companion, as it were. If it is not too forward of me, sir, might I encourage you to make the acquaintance of a young lady currently of Shrewsbury College? She is a friend of Mr. Wooster's, and possessed of a surpassing passion for invertebrates.

GUSSIE: Really? Fancy that.

JEEVES: Her name is Amaryllis Blackwood, and she is often to be found in the Museum of Natural History, communing with the salamanders. I have some small inkling that you may find her companionship most agreeable, sir.

GUSSIE: Gosh. Well, I suppose I'd better be off to find some way to ease the bitter emptiness of the rest of my life. Might go pop in and chat to the newts in the Natural History Museum, and see if this Miss Blackwood is about. It's always comforting to talk to a fellow adventurer in the amphibian realms.

JEEVES: I...am glad to have given satisfaction, sir.

_Exit GUSSIE. JEEVES remains onstage, staring bleakly into the void. Eventually, he takes a long swig straight from the decanter and sighs heavily. Enter the PROCTOR._

PROCTOR: Ah, good afternoon, sir. Everything in order?

JEEVES: Indeed it is, sir; perhaps even more orderly than it was mere moments ago. You see, a certain terribly interesting document has come into my possession, which may be of some professional interest to you in the upcoming tribunal...not to mention a certain amount of personal amusement.

_Exeunt JEEVES and the PROCTOR, passing the small notebook back and forth, and snickering._


	11. Act Two, Scene Four: The College Disciplinary Panel, Shrewsbury College

_Enter AGATHA and DAHLIA who take up position at a large lectern or desk. The FASCISTS and RADICALS line up diagonally either side of it, as if in two docks._

AGATHA: The Collegiate Disciplinary Panel is now in session. We are here to discuss the deplorable events last night on Staircase Two.

LENNY: Hang on, you shrivelled-up old bat! You can't do this! We're not at your poxy little college.

AGATHA: Oops ( _puts on gown_ ). My mistake. Dahlia, would you go and fetch Mr Pomfret, the Junior Proctor? Such a pity we can't deal with these things informally, it saves so much paperwork in sending people down and things. You are, for now, members of this “poxy little university” are you not?

STUDENTS: Yes ma'am.

_Enter PROCTOR_

PROCTOR: Good afternoon. This is a proctor's enquiry and disciplinary hearing, duly constituted under Statute 94 part 13...

AGATHA: “No undergraduate shall represent himself as a foreign dignitary or member of the opposite gender? Have I perhaps missed some part of this increasingly unsavoury incident?

PROCTOR: Beg pardon, Dr Wooster, I mean Statute 13 part 94, dealing with the disciplinary powers of Proctors and Heads of Houses.

SPODE: Now look here! I am not under your authority. I am a graduate of Porterhouse College, Cambridge, and leader of the British Union of Florists ( _FASCISTS cough, RADICALS giggle_ ) Fascists, a completely respectable political movement which is going to save this nation from the disgraceful march of foreign, degenerate influences such as this so-called college. Hail Me!

FASCISTS: Hail Spode!

PROCTOR: If you aren't a member of this University, Mr... Spade...

SPODE: Spode!

PROCTOR: Then why -

DAHLIA: ...were you sneaking around the bedroom of a female undergraduate at three o'clock in the morning?

SPODE: That ( _with effort at great dignity_ ) is none of your business, Miss Travers.

AGATHA: I believe her title is Doctor Travers. And if it is not our business, it is assuredly police business.

PROCTOR: As I was saying before I was so loudly interrupted ( _his glare bounces right off Dahlia_ ), this is a police matter for any cases which cannot be dealt with internally. I have here in my hand a most interesting eyewitness narrative of your activities, Mr Spade. Shall I read some of it?

DAHLIA: Oh, please do!

PROCTOR: Ahem. “Saw Spod this evening outside the offices of the Left Indicator Review. I thought chimpanzees threw dung, not half-bricks. The hooting and gibbering was about right, though. How that simian creature ever came to be leader of anything, even half a dozen half-wits, is a mystery to me. Someone ought to write an an article on it. Even among the newts leadership, such as it is, does not belong to the stupidest.”

SPODE: This is that lickspittle Fink-Nottle's work, isn't it? I'd know his puling liberal newt-mania anywhere! I'll crush him! He shall feel the wrath of Spode and the British Union of Florists! I shall be revenged!

_EXIT SPODE_

AGATHA: Has anyone else got any protestations with which to waste my valuable time and extremely limited patience?

ODIN: Yes! We of the Radical Students' Front for the Liberation of the Oppressed, Celtic Independence, Anti-War Activism and Cheaper Hall Charges at Magdalen reject the bourgeois notion of collegiate discipline, declare the Proctors' authority to be a neo-feudal capitalist relic of oppression and demand our case be considered by a jury of our peers duly vetted by us for an appropriate degree of general revolutionary zeal.

POLLY: Hear hear! That is, we wish all this to be entered in the record, but otherwise submit to your opinion.

HOLMES: No we don't.

POLLY ( _stage whisper_ ): Yes we bloody well do or do you want to end up working on a sodding building site?

HOLMES: Yes, indeed, what Comrade Polly said, quite so.

DAHLIA: Good boy. Now, Polly, you seem to have some sense. Would you care to explain what you thought you were playing at?

ODIN: We were shadowing those disgusting Fascists in an attempt to expose their vile and depraved activities. We found a boy scout outside looking for his 'patrol mates' and imagine our surprise when those 'mates' answered the description of Spode and his minions. Naturally we came in to investigate...

AGATHA: Breaking and entering into my college in the process, from which you know all male undergraduates are barred after 11pm.

ODIN: Yes, well, it was in the service of the Revolution. And then we found four malodorous Fascists in unwashed football kit trying to burgle poor Comrade Blackwood's room.

HOLMES: Doubtless some sort of vile counter-revolutionary plot.

DAHLIA: Counter to which Revolution? We haven't had one since 1688.

AGATHA: Load of blithering nonsense. You three, your punishment for sneaking around after hours will be to assist the College gardeners next weekend. Political activities will not be accepted as an excuse. Now get out and don't come back.

_Exeunt RADICALS._

PROCTOR: Now, to the serious charges. To which we appear to be missing some witnesses. Are Mr Wooster, Miss Blackwood or, ah, Edwin present?

AGATHA: I regret that my hopeless nephew, having done something right for once in his life, is absent. Heaven knows where he can have got to, the clot. But as Mr Spod said, Bertram is not under our authority. Miss Blackwood is of a nervous disposition and has taken a walk to calm herself down, and Edwin has been carried off in disgrace by his mother.

PROCTOR: Well then. Have you three anything to say for yourselves?

RIFF: We protest that we ought to be tried by a neutral authority. As we are well-known to object to Women's Colleges we can't possibly be given a fair hearing here.

STALL: Also we think last night's chaos has clearly shown that Shrewsbury is a bad influence on the University and it ought to be shut down as we've said all along. Hail Spode!

LENNY & RIFF: Hail Spode!

AGATHA: If you do that again there will be trouble, you little brats. Dare I ask what on Earth you thought you were playing at?

LENNY: We were... er... trying to find the gents lavatory?

RIFF: Yes, we'd been visiting a friend and we got lost trying to get out...

DAHLIA: Of a staircase containing all of six rooms, none of which is the gentlemen's lavatory.

AGATHA: I know everyone on that staircase and I can't believe any of them would consort with the British Union of Florists. Sorry, Fascists, I think it's catching. Who was this friend?

LENNY/RIFF/STALL: Diana! / Deborah! / Nancy!

PROCTOR: Very persuasive. Now shall we dispense with the prevarications before I grow impatient and have the lot of you sent down?

STALL: Alright, it's a fair cop. We were trying to steal...

AGATHA: I knew it! Lepidoptery bandits!

RIFF: Lepi-what now?

AGATHA: Miss Blackwood's valuable Red-Winged Filbert! Disgraceful!

PROCTOR: A what?

DAHLIA: A valuable butterfly specimen.

AGATHA: Oh yes. Immensely valuable. Scientifically significant, too. The penalties for Burglary in this College are Very Severe.

 _At this point, the RADICAL STUDENTS re-enter making a tremendous racket, shouting revolutionary slogans and demanding death to the Fascist Hordes etc._   _They start singing_ La Marseillaise, _but get confused and wander into_ Do you hear the People sing?

DAHLIA ( _at full volume_ ): Will you BE QUIET!?!

ODIN ( _even louder, over his colleagues_ ): We're exercising our Right to Peaceful Protest.

AGATHA: Well bugger off and exercise it somewhere else.

_The RADICALS continue._

AGATHA: As I was saying, the penalties for Burglary are VERY SEV... oh sod it, I can't hear myself think.

PROCTOR: We shall adjourn these proceedings until tomorrow.

DAHLIA: Agatha, my de-, er, I mean, Dr Wooster, shall we retire to the President's Lodgings?

AGATHA: Lead on darl-, ah, Dr Travers.

_Exeunt omnes._


	12. Act Two, Scene Five: The Natural History Museum, Oxford

_GUSSIE is standing admiring a(n invisible) tank of newts, or possibly just staring into space. He heaves a heavy sigh._

GUSSIE: I wish I understood women the way I understand newts.

AMARYLLIS: (from offstage) I don't blame you one bit, old bean. They are magnificent creatures, aren't they?

_AMARYLLIS wanders onstage as she speaks. She comes to stand next to GUSSIE, who is dumbstruck._

AMARYLLIS: Yet somehow mysterious, all at the same time.

GUSSIE: ( _faintly_ ) Do...do you mean ladies, or newts?

AMARYLLIS: Which would you prefer?

_**SONG: If the World Were A Newt** _

**Amaryllis**

Isn’t it strange how newts have a way  
Of growing new limbs when they’re taken

**Gussie**

And isn’t it strange how hearts have a way  
Of growing back when they’ve been broken

**Amaryllis**

Like the larval stage beginning  
When tadpoles start swimming  
There’s a metamorphosis inside my soul  
I feel whole

If the world were a stage  
We’d be the lovers  
If the world were a page  
We’d conjugate each other  
If the world were a newt  
You’d be the crest, old pal

**Gussie**

Isn’t is great how newts find a mate  
By waving their tails ‘til they vibrate

**Amaryllis**

And isn’t it naff how humans are daft  
And only find love when it’s too late

Can’t you stop these spires from dreaming  
And scheming – and screaming  
I just want to hibernate and hide away  
‘Til the day

**Both**

When the world is a stage  
And we are the lovers  
The world is a page  
We’ll conjugate each other  
The world is a newt  
And you’ll be the crest, old pal!

_Overwhelmed by feelings, AMARYLLIS dashes offstage, leaving GUSSIE like a stunned mullet. Enter BERTIE with a hipflask._

BERTIE: I say, old chap, are you quite alright? You look like something on a slab.

GUSSIE: Oh, Bertie, I am transported! I've just seen a vision. An angel in a twinset. She came to me and spoke sweet nothings, backed up with a truly impressive amount of scientific enthusiasm!

BERTIE: Oh ah?

GUSSIE: Her hair glowed like the sunset beauty of a salamander's scales and her smile was like that of a happy axolotl. She moved with more grace than newts by moonlight. She blinded me with science – oh, Bertie, I declare I am most passionately in love!

BERTIE: Well, that's frightfully good news. I'm sure I wish you every bit of happiness. To your long and newty life together! ( _takes a draught from the hipflask_ ) What's this beautiful beasel's name?

GUSSIE: Amaryllis!

 _BERTIE spit-takes_.

GUSSIE: Isn't it just the most melodious name you've ever heard, Bertie? Doesn't it sound like the music of the very spheres, like the Oxford bells?

BERTIE: I, er, yes, certainly, capital! Is she still in the vicinity?

GUSSIE: No. She dashed off under a small localised cloud of beauty and unexpressed sentiments. Dashed funny meteorology they've got in Oxford.

BERTIE: Well?! What are you waiting for? Go after her! Go and extract promises of eternal love for her, before she does anything as foolish as get engaged to some hapless blighter who never asked her to declare herself to him in the first place! I mean -

GUSSIE: ( _happily oblivious_ ) I will! I will do that! Thanks, old man!

_GUSSIE dashes off in the same direction as AMARYLLIS. BERTIE beats feet in the opposite direction, looking thoroughly cheerful for the first time since Act 1 Scene 1._

 


	13. Act Two, Scene Six: Dr Travers' Office, Shrewsbury College, Oxford

_AUNT DAHLIA is sitting at her desk, working._

AMARYLLIS: ( _from offstage, quiet, despairing_ ) What ho, Dr. Travers?

DAHLIA: Come in!

_Enter AMARYLLIS, drooping somewhat._

AMARYLLIS: Hullo there. DAHLIA: Hullo yourself, you young ink-splot on the page of Oxford history. What's the trouble? You look like a cherub who's lost her soap in the bath.

AMARYLLIS: Oh Dr. Travers, it's positively unbearable! I've finally found the other half of my soul! The object of my ardent desires!

DAHLIA: You found your snails? Did they manage to escape again?

AMARYLLIS: Oh no, the snails are quite safe, thank you. No. No, I'm afraid I must ask your advice on matters...of the human heart, Dr. Travers.

DAHLIA: I think it's Agatha you might want for that one, my girl.

AMARYLLIS: ( _ignoring her_ ) It's absolutely dreadful. I've fallen in love so totally, and my love for him is as pure as magnesium burning in a Bunsen's flame.

DAHLIA: I agree that the prospect of anyone loving my nephew in the Biblical sense is rather dreadful. That's not even counting the proposition of having his biscuit-coloured lump face being the first thing you see in the morning – for the rest of your life! Still, I don't see why it's cause for all this swooning and mooning. We'll fix up a date, reserve the College chapel, and get you fitted for a lovely wedding labcoat, if you will insist on this hare-brained scheme.

AMARYLLIS: Bertie? Love? Me? In? With? No, no, not at all – you think I'm in love with Bertie?!

DAHLIA: The fact that you pressed your suit on him was rather a tip-off.

AMARYLLIS: Don't be silly, I don't even know how to work the trouser-press. No. I'm afraid my love is a forbidden one, and poignant – like being stung by nettles and seeing a patch of dockleaves just out of reach. The fact of the matter is: I am in everlasting love with Gussie Fink-Nottle!

_AMARYLLIS is nonplussed by DAHLIA's fit of uncontrollable, screaming laughter._

DAHLIA: ( _holding her sides, in tears of laughter_ ): Spink-Bottle! Good old Spink-Bottle! What a turn-up for the books this is. He's got a face only Dr. Moreau could love. Well, God help and save both of you, is what I say.

AMARYLLIS: Don't you see? I can't possibly marry him! I have plighted my troth to another!

_Enter AUNT AGATHA, clearly expecting DAHLIA to be alone._

AGATHA: What's all this about?

AMARYLLIS: Dr. Wooster! It's heart-rendingly dreadful! You see, I'm in love with somebody else entirely, but I've agreed to marry Bertie sort of by accident and now I -

_AGATHA pats her on the shoulder_

AGATHA: ( _not entirely unkindly_ ): There, there. Shut up.

DAHLIA: I was encouraging her to drop him like elemental sodium dropped into water, and go bother – I mean betrothe – herself to the fellow she actually loves.

AGATHA: That does seem to be the best of an assortment of bad options, yes.

AMARYLLIS: Just like that?

AUNTS: Yes!

AMARYLLIS: Oh, alright then. Might as well. Thank you for the advice!

_AMARYLLIS dashes off. The AUNTS watch her go; DAHLIA fondly, AGATHA...not so much._

AGATHA: The good fairy certainly dropped that one on her head during the christening.

DAHLIA: Well, I think it's sweet. They're all so earnest, you know; the first young love is always so deadly serious.

_She pinches AGATHA's arm._

DAHLIA: Not that you'd remember, I'm sure. Anyway, even you had your silly season once, as I recall.

AGATHA: I was the model of decency, modesty, and discretion when I was courting you!

DAHLIA: You picked me up in a teashop by asking me if the Natural History Museum was missing one of its specimens, because I was as beautiful as a glass-wing butterfly. Then you spilt tea on my blouse.

_**SONG: Aunt Calls To Aunt:** _

**Dahlia** (with sarcastic interjections, spoken, from  **Agatha** )

Oh, I remember that one day ( **Agatha** : Oh, no not the story again)  
It was the day that we first met ( **Agatha** : A rainy day it was...)  
Though you are tough, or so you say  
You were so charming. Oh that day... ( **Agatha** : coughs)

My love....  
You were the sweetest,  
The cutest, that I've ever seen. ( **Agatha** : Hardly)  
That time that you asked me out,   
You got me for life

Pitt Rivers was our first date  
You took me out to see the newts ( **Agatha** : fascinating creatures)  
But when we reached the butterflies  
I thought I lost you, my oh, my. ( **Agatha** : I was merely slightly distracted)

My love....  
You were the sweetest,  
The cutest, that I've ever seen. ( **Agatha** : Really?)  
That time that you asked me out,   
You got me for life

I would marry you right now ( **Agatha** : that would be highly inconvenient)  
If only we could just come out. ( **Agatha** : and if gay marriage was legal)  
The moment when you touched my hand  
I saw our future, hand in hand. ( **Agatha** : that is too cliché!)

My love....  
You were the sweetest,  
The cutest, that I've ever seen  
That time that you asked me out,   
You got me for life

( **Agatha** : You realize it was nothing like that, right?)

_The AUNTS kiss. Exeunt omnes._

 


	14. Act Two, Scene Seven: The Banks of the Cherwell

_GUSSIE is sitting on a bench, moping gently._

GUSSIE: It's no good. I can't find her anywhere. It's as if she were a particularly edible newt, carried off by an eagle to be dropped from a great height. Or is that tortoises they do that to? Silly practice.

_Enter AMARYLLIS_

AMARYLLIS: Who on Earth are you talking to? There's nobody here.

GUSSIE: Amaryllis? Is it true? My darling Amaryllis standing before me like a Great Crested Newt displaying its throat-sacs?

AMARYLLIS: I am not swollen and inflated. Quite slender, really, but apparently that's in fashion now. Can't you compare me to a frill-necked lizard instead? But Gussie, what are you looking at me like that for?

GUSSIE: I... I... I'm not looking at you like anything.

AMARYLLIS: Oh dear. That's a pity. Because if that were a look of loving adoration I should tell you I feel quite the same, and would be honoured if you would sweep me off my feet and carry me off to the Natural History Museum, or my rooms, or some other suitable locale.

GUSSIE: Well, I think it might have to be a fireman's lift in that case. I'm not really built for carrying anything much larger than a newt in my arms.

AMARYLLIS: Have you often had occasion to carry newts in your arms?

GUSSIE: ( _Merrily_ ): Oh yes.

AMARYLLIS: Oh my angel lamb! My dream of joy!

_They embrace. Enter AGATHA, who rolls her eyes heartily_

AGATHA: You are aware, I trust, Miss Blackwood, of the college regulations regarding public displays of affection and the inviting of gentlemen callers into the grounds?

AMARYLLIS: Oh, Dr Wooster, I'm just so happy. I have become engaged!

AGATHA: Thank heavens for that. To the correct gentleman this time?

AMARYLLIS: Oh yes! And Dr Travers mentioned that you like butterflies, so I'm presenting you with my Red-Winged Filbert as an engagement present. Thanks ever so for your good advice, old bean.

AGATHA: Really? Oh you are a sweet girl. But engagement presents are usually given to the happy couple, are they not?

AMARYLLIS: Oh, well, yes, then it's a token of my appreciation for your good and timely advice.

AGATHA: If you want something said, ask a literary theorist, but if you want something done, it's biologists first and the rest nowhere.

GUSSIE: It is, isn't it? Why, the Colchian sea-snake...

AGATHA: Do yourself a favour, Spink-Bottle, and be quiet before you spoil it. Has someone told my nephew about his change in circumstances yet?

_GUSSIE looks guilty_

AMARYLLIS: No. Why, do you think I should?

AGATHA: Oh, don't worry. My nephew is never happier than when someone has issued him with an opinion.

_Enter BERTIE_

BERTIE: Do I feel my ears burning? Oh, it's... you. Hello, Amaryllis, my... dear.

GUSSIE: Dash it all, Bertie, you can't address a man's fiancee like that!

BERTIE: ( _sputters_ ) Your fiancee?!! That's... why, that's marvellous news. Congratulations, both of you, what a jolly splendid turn-up for the old books.

AMARYLLIS: You don't ... mind, then? ( _in slightly hopeful tones_ ) If an elephant seal steals a bigger elephant seal's mate, they bite each other. 

BERTIE: Fear not, I'm always happy to be the wingman to the jolly old bluebird of happiness. It's rather a feather in my cap, really. I've managed to do something without Jeeves' assistance.

AGATHA: Oh, really? What exactly did you 'do' to achieve this happy union?

BERTIE: Well, ah, um, I was a sort of guiding spirit, don't you know? A benign influence. A catastrophe ( _AGATHA and GUSSIE snigger_ ), no, that's not it, a catamite, no, still wrong...

_Enter JEEVES_

JEEVES: A catalyst, sir?

BERTIE: Absolutely, yes. A catalyst.

JEEVES: As you say, sir. I must confess I am accustomed to be required in a more central role than I have assumed in this affair.

BERTIE: As the poet says, every dog has its day, Jeeves.

JEEVES: I believe that is more in the nature of a proverb, sir.

BERTIE: I say, Jeeves, are you quite alright? You seem almost to droop between the shoulders.

_Enter AUNT DAHLIA in a blaze of loudness!_

DAHLIA: Oh how marvellous! I see everything has worked itself out after all! But there is one, thing, Agatha dear, I mean Doc---

AMARYLLIS: Honestly, Doctor Travers, we all know. It's fine.

_Whilst the below happens, Amaryllis and Gussie go and canoodle by the river_

JEEVES: Indeed, I would characterise the present company as favourable to a general informality.

DAHLIA: Well, anyway, Agatha. About my conference. We need to pay Lady Florence's appearance fee somehow, and Milady's Review is still flat broke.

AGATHA: Well, the College funds can't stand it. We've lost half our donations since Spode inherited that blasted baronetcy. His father was a great friend of the College, you know.

JEEVES: If I might venture a suggestion, ma'am?

DAHLIA: Anything, Jeeves! If you can get me out of this financial hole, I will be eternally grateful.

JEEVES: It has come to my attention that the junior members of the British Union of Fascists have committed various crimes against the discipline of the College and University. Doubtless if they are convicted of these several offences they will be fined a large sum of money. Might this sum alleviate your temporary financial embarrassments?

AGATHA: Yes, I suppose it might. Assuming they are all guilty, of course.

DAHLIA: Don't worry, they will be. Jeeves, you are a pearl beyond price. Who shall find my nephew's valet, for his price is above rubies?

JEEVES: I endeavour to give satisfaction, ma'am.

_Enter SPODE_

SPODE: Where is that squit Gussie Fink-Nottle! I'll tear him apart!

AGTHA: Calm yourself, Mr Spade. There are ladies present.

SPODE: Where. Is. FINK-NOTTLE!?!

JEEVES: He is over there, sir, just by the river-bank.

_SPODE bellows in rage and charges towards where GUSSIE is hiding behind AMARYLLIS._

SPODE: Get out of the way, Miss.

AMARYLLIS: I've had quite enough of you, you fathead. How dare you threaten my beloved Gussie?

SPODE: I warn you again! A true Fascist would never hit a lady, but you, madame, are no lady!

AMARYLLIS: Oh do shut up!

_SPODE resumes his charge dodge, she trips him and he charges into the Cherwell as GUSSIE legs it. A dripping-wet Spode is helped out of the river by the AUNTS, who take him off to be dried and arrested. BERTIE and JEEVES are left alone on stage._

BERTIE: Well, here we find ourselves once more, Jeeves.

JEEVES: Indeed, sir.

BERTIE: Fished out of the soup of despair by the kindly soup-spoon of smiling Destiny, as it were, and deposited safely next to the cosmic bread roll.

JEEVES: A whimsical metaphor, if I may say so, sir.

BERTIE: You may say anything you like, Jeeves. This is a joyous occasion! Speaking of which – are you quite sure you're all right? You're still a bit adrift and a-droop.

JEEVES: It pains me most sincerely to admit it, sir, but...I was, in the greater part, useless to you today. I suppose I wondered if you no longer found me indispensable?

BERTIE: Oh, Jeeves! You're absolutely essential to my life, you know. Can't imagine the day-to-day without you. There are such things as ties that bind, after all – even if they're not ironed out quite right, from time to time.

JEEVES: That is a circumstance I cannot permit myself imagine, sir.

BERTIE: I shan't mention it again. I feel like this is such a wonderful escape that I should like to gift you something, Jeeves. Anything your heart desires. You have only to ask, and it shall be yours.

JEEVES: That is most generous, sir. Anything?

BERTIE: Anything at all.

JEEVES: There is one small thing, sir. It pertains to the matter of your lime-green bowler hat.

BERTIE: Fear not, Jeeves. After Miss Blackwood expressed deep admiration and affection for the article in question, I shall make her a present of it this very afternoon – as congratulations, and deep relief, on her engagement to somebody who isn't me.

JEEVES: Very good, sir.

_They would hug here, if they weren't terminally British; in lieu of hugs, they sing._

**_FINAL SONG "We Would Hug If We Weren't So British"_ **

__

_**Bertie** : _ _Why, Jeeves, we are so jolly  
_ _I would hug you here right now  
_ _But I fear it would be folly  
_ _It’ll have to be a formal bow_

_**Jeeves (spoken)** : _ _I think that would be more appropriate sir._

_**Both**  (_ _bow and sigh)_

_**Bertie** : _ _We would hug if we weren’t so British  
_ _We’d embrace if it wouldn’t make us skittish  
_ _Since we know what we mean to one another  
_ _You’re more than just a friend, you’re like a relative…_

_**Jeeves (spoken)** _ _A brother?_

_I suggest we should just smile and nod politely  
_ _Any other way would be, I think, unsightly_

**_Bertie & Jeeves:_ ** _So we’d hug if we weren’t so British_

 

_**Fascists & Communists**: _ _We’d punch you in the face if we weren’t so British  
_ _Your ideology is just plain piggish_

_**Communists** : _ _Our socialist regime will come to rule you all  
_ _When your capitalist imperialist government starts to faaaall_

_**Fascists** : _ _Fall?!_

_Just you wait til we start our new regime  
_ _But first we must complete this education scheme_

_**Fascists & Communists**: _ _So let’s first pass our finals together_

 

****_Agatha & Dahlia, Gussie & Amaryllis:  
_ _We would kiss if we weren’t so British  
_ _If such affection wouldn’t hurt our image_

_**Agatha & Dahlia**: _ _Oh we know just how we love each other  
_ _Not only as your colleague but your lover  
_ _**V/O** : _ _Woof, woof!_

_**Gussie & Amaryllis**: _ _We go together like a tadpole and its tail  
_ _One day we’ll be ambassadors to British snails!_

_**Agatha, Dahlia, Amaryllis, Gussie** : _ _And so we’d kiss if we weren’t so British_

 

_**All** : We’d hug if we weren’t so British!  
_ _And as the day at last draws to its finish  
_ _We’ll say “what ho!”, we’ll shake hands and we’ll tip our hats  
_ _As when all’s said and done we are just jolly chaps_

_**Dahlia** : _ _Or chapettes!_

_**All:**  _ _All our lives we live in cold formality  
_ _To keep ourselves in comfortable normality  
_ _So we would hug if we weren’t so British!_

_**Bertie (sad face, spoken)** : _ _But we are, so we shan’t._

_**Jeeves, (spoken)** : _ _Very good, sir._

**_THE END_ **

 

 

 


End file.
